180Connect costs nothing to run. Every service it uses is on a free plan, and none has a payment card attached (confirmed 2026-09-26). So nothing can run up a bill: when a free allowance runs out, that service stops until the allowance resets, rather than charging anyone.
That makes the limits below the things to watch. They are why some features are rationed, and they explain most of what can suddenly stop working.
Do not add a payment card to any of these accounts without the branch leadership agreeing to the cost first. A card turns "stops" into "bills", often with no ceiling.
The limits that matter
| Service | What it does | The free allowance that matters | When it runs out |
|---|---|---|---|
| The database (Supabase) | Holds every client, email and record | 500 MB of data, shared by everything | Saving starts to fail across the app. See Changes will not save |
| The database (Supabase) | Holds every client, email and record | Sleeps after about a week nobody uses it | The site will not load until it is woken. See The site will not load |
| The website (Vercel) | Runs 180Connect itself, and keeps the nightly backups | A monthly allowance of computing time | The app is paused until the next month. Most of 180Connect's background work is built to use as little of this as possible |
| The AI (Google Gemini) | Writes draft emails and client booklets; powers plain-English search | A daily number of requests, shared by the whole branch | AI features refuse until the next day (about 8am UK time); everything else works. Each person also has their own smaller allowance. See An AI feature says to wait |
| The branch mailbox (Google Workspace) | Sends outreach, receives replies | Gmail's own daily sending limit | 180Connect's Outreach sending limit keeps the branch well below it, on purpose |
| Invite and password emails (Resend) | Sends invites and password resets | A monthly and daily number of emails, far above what the branch sends | New people cannot be invited, and nobody can reset a password, until it resets |
| News (Exa) | Finds news about a client for its News tab, and a recent story to mention in a follow-up email | A monthly credit, shared by both | The News tab says news search is unavailable and keeps showing what was already found; follow-ups are written without the news item |
| The code and automatic jobs (GitHub) | Keeps the code, and runs the backups and monthly register downloads | A monthly number of minutes for automatic jobs | Backups and register downloads stop until the next month |
| Error reports (Sentry) | Tells a developer when something breaks | A monthly number of error reports | Further reports are dropped; the app is unaffected |
Free services with no limit worth watching: the sign-in check (Cloudflare Turnstile), and the public registers and databases 180Connect reads — the Charity Commission, Companies House, 360Giving and postcodes.io.
The exact numbers change whenever a provider changes its plans, so they are not copied here to go stale. A developer can read the current ones on each provider's own pricing page; their Accounts and access document says which account each service is held under.
How 180Connect stays inside them
These are deliberate, and are why a few things work the way they do:
- Old records are cleared out every night — old notifications, old logs, and inbox marks — so the 500 MB lasts.
- Files are never stored in the database. Attachments live in separate file storage with its own allowance.
- AI is rationed per person (about 20 drafts an hour and 40 AI searches a day each), so one busy afternoon cannot use up the branch's whole day.
- Checks for new replies and scheduled emails are done by the database itself, which only wakes the website when there is real work — that keeps the monthly computing time low.
If the branch ever needs more
If a limit is reached so often that it gets in the way of the work, the answer is a decision for branch leadership, not a quick fix: whether to pay for a plan, and who holds the card. Ask a developer what the change would cost and what it would buy before anyone adds a card.